Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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First Fiction Fridays: What We Once Believed
Andrea MacPherson’s What We Once Believed (Caitlin Press) takes readers to summer 1971 to a cul-de-sac community of Oak Bay on Vancouver Island, BC. There, we meet estranged mother Camille and her eleven-year-old daughter Maybe who’ve just reunited, becoming the talk of the town within their community. The novel speaks to questions surrounding motherhood and…
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Character Study: The Captain of Kinnoull Hill
Jamie Tennant’s The Captain of Kinnoull Hill (Palimpsest Press) follows unlikeable music snob Dennis Duckworth as he finds himself stranded and broke in rural Scotland after his flight from New York mysteriously changes course. Filled with musical references and touches of magic realism, the novel features a cast of quirky characters like a grumpy thousand-year-old goblin…
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Short Story Month: The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories
paulo da costa’s latest short story collection The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories (Guernica Editions) is exclusively made up of “sudden fiction” – that is, stories under 1,000 words apiece. With stories like “Roses, Lilacs, and Chrysanthemums” (excerpted below) that manage to be succinct yet utterly evocative of their settings and characters, paulo likens Midwife to a “literary…
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Top 10: Books by Asian-Canadian Authors
May is Asian Heritage Month, and we’re showing some love with this top 10 list of books by Asian-Canadians that have made an impact on us.
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This Week in Lit Events: May 15-21st
Would you believe it? There’s not one, but two seasonal launches this week, as well as a ton more readings, book launches, and events to take a gander at.Are you hosting an event featuring an author whose titles are available on All Lit Up? Send the event details, including author, book, date, time, and address to hello@alllitup.ca to be…
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In Review: The Week of May 8th
There’s a ton of inspiring, amazing women in this week’s blog features on All Lit Up, including a nod to our own mothers who we literally wouldn’t be here without, and some short but mighty fiction.
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First Fiction Fridays: Arabic for Beginners
Ariela Freedman’s Arabic for Beginners (Linda Leith Publishing) sets the intimate within the international: a friendship between women in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the friendship between an Israeli mother, Hannah, and a Palestinian one deepens, her other relationships – to her husband and country – begin to stumble. Learn more about the debut novel…
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Thanks, Mom: ALU Staffers Share How Moms Got Us Reading
It probably goes without saying that we’re all readers here at All Lit Up – but how did we get this way? This Mother’s Day, we’re saluting our moms, and with their help, reminiscing how they got us to be the book-loving nerds who bring you book news week after week (featuring adorable and embarrassing…
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Short Story Month: The Auction from Long Story Short
The plays in Long Story Short: An Anthology of (Mostly) 10-Minute Plays (Playwrights Canada Press) may only be ten-minutes each, but they pack plot and character development into an ephemeral, mighty piece of theatre. The anthology features 25 short plays, but to sample the collection we cross fade on one of them: Trina Davies’s The…
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Poetry in Motion: Frequent, small loads of laundry
A sassy, smart debut collection from Rhonda Ganz, Frequent, small loads of laundry (Mother Tongue Publishing) is all about the ways in which we behave in moments of intimacy and domesticity. Ganz strings together the ordinary with the absurd and hangs up to dry snapshots of flawed love. As Lorna Crozier puts it: “If this is…
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This Week in Lit Events: May 8-14th
Why not celebrate Mother’s Day by treating her to a literary event visit? There’s tons to choose from this week, including Poet Laureate readings in London, the Atwater Poetry Project in Montreal, and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.Are you hosting an event featuring an author whose titles are available on All Lit Up? Send the…
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In Review: The Week of May 1st
This week we said goodbye to National Poetry Month (but sent it off in boozy style), hello to Short Story Month, and learned that book design decisions can tell more of a story, all on its own.
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First Fiction Fridays: Oil Change at Rath’s Garage
Shari Narine’s debut novel Oil Change at Rath’s Garage (Thistledown Press) takes readers on a ride stopping in to explore everything from hook-ups to love to family dynamics and the past.
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Under the Cover: Searching for Petronius Totem and, What about the robot chickens?
No one would dispute that Peter Unwin’s latest book: Searching for Petronius Totem (Freehand Books), is wild: it’s a novel equally as about art and the self as it is about a terrifying, omnipresent chicken corporation. How to translate that same narrative energy into a book design? Kelsey from Freehand shares the process with us: much like…
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Short Story Month: RATS NEST
Short Story Month on ALU opens with a big bang: Mat Laporte’s first full-length short story collection, RATS NEST(BookThug) takes readers to places fantastical, mysterious, and sometimes hallucinogenic. Described by award-winning author Liz Howard as “a dissident, noir, cyberpunk diary that recalls the monotony of service/office labour and projects that struggle onto the failed tropes…
Got any book recommendations?